Senioritis

A tentative first step back into my illustrated journal. Drawn while sitting, overtired, in bed.

Jack was eager to settle his college plans early and so was I. His acceptance to RISD was a huge relief for both of us. The stress and uncertainty of the college process was over and now we can both relax until September.
But doing next to nothing turns out to be a lot less fun than he thought it would be. Fall is a long way away and Jack still has to get up at 7:00 each morning and sit in classes all day, listening to droning teachers, half-heartedly writing homework assignments in the period before they’re due, doing the bare minimum to keep his grades above water so his acceptance isn’t rescinded.
I say to him, well, you’re still being taught useful and interesting things, even if your grades really don’t mean as much. Can’t you just learn … for the fun of it? What’s the point, he groans. Who cares? I’ll study when I get to college… Etc.
Senioritis isn’t confined to teenagers. At every point in life, it’s easy to be so focused on goals that one can’t see the value in anything that doesn’t pertain directly to them. All around are books and classes and conversations and experiences that would enrich us greatly but it’s easier to just do the same-old and not expend the effort for something that doesn’t same to have a direct benefit or relevance to one’s occupation or obligations. What’s the point in learning to draw or reading about ancient history or trying sushi or visiting China? We think we know it better, so despite the richness of the world around you, if your mindset is wrong you won’t absorb or even register it. You screen it out.
When we’re toddlers, we are constantly exploring and asking questions about everything we encounter. That impulse diminishes when we get older because our pre-frontal cortex develops and filters out the firehouse of information that is constantly streaming in. Most of the time, we certainly need that filter so we can be focused and goal oriented — it would be impossible to get anything done if we were always walking around in slack-jawed amazement. So we increasingly notice only those things that we have decided are related to our preconceived goals and orientations.
That means it takes an extreme form of novelty or trauma to snap us out of this narrow tunnel we have burrowed into. Something like 9/11, a death, an accident, can force us into a reassessment and new orientation. Our eyes are opened, we say, and suddenly we see things we’d never seen before.
We use this metaphoric language to describe this epiphany but what if we take this notion literally and force ourselves to actually see things anew. We can reorient our perception and put on a wider lens. Of course, we don’t want to eliminate this screening function altogether or else we might wander off the road and spend all day picking wild flowers, but we can pick moments to relax our pre-frontal cortex, return to a more childlike state, rebuild our muscles of perception, and restock our cache of creative stimulation.
When you draw something you see it in a new way. A good drawing is a fresh perspective on an object you may have seen a thousand times before: a building, a body, a bowl of fruit, your breakfast dishes. But by paying deliberate and careful attention to every nook and cranny, you flood your mind and your page with new information about what you are seeing — the texture of a banana skin, the way light hits a brick, how the knee connects to the shin bone, the exact curve of a cup handle. You are suspending the critical function of your pre-frontal cortex, refusing to decide whether there’s importance to each individual line and aspect; you just record them all. This information isn’t actually that important to you beyond the act of drawing, you don’t need to retain the visual data about that banana skin, it may have no further utility to you. But it is expanding your awareness of the world around you, strengthening for observation muscles — it has as much purpose as lifting the same weight over and over at the gym.
When your mind’s eye is open and your screens and filters are down, you get more and more useful information, and that information and experience are the raw fodder for creativity. Forming associations between apparently disparate things to create a new idea is what creativity is all about. And the more open your mind is, the more you are open to experiencing things are interesting but may not have immediate and obvious relevance to your current endeavors. By exposing yourself to art, to novelty, to new ideas, facts and experiments, you stretch your mind so that it is pliable and elastic, so that it doesn’t seize up when you have to move in a new direction. Your reservoirs of references are loaded and you have oodles of bits and bobs to build new ideas with.
Senioritis hits senior citizens too. It’s easy, as you become middle aged and older, to think you know it all, that you have discovered what matters, that you know what you like to eat and like to vote for and where you like to visit and what you like to read and that experimentation and exploration are things of the past. But if you can loosen up your built-in filters, if you can slow down and draw every petal of a flower or the hairs on a dog’s muzzle, you’ll soon see that you don’t know everything, far from it, and in fact you never will. And that realization, that the more we know the less we know, will set you free to devote the rest of your days to exploring the depth of your ignorance, to gathering sticks and shells and tastes and smells, and weaving them together in to combinations you and no one else have ever seen before.
Jack can afford to suspend learning until September. But I can’t.

I’m 61 and in denial about being a senior, unless they give me a discount! I remember going into a learning slump in my senior year, and my son did the same thing during his. Funny, at my age, I’m learning more than ever, perhaps because I have the luxury of choosing what to focus on, and I can learn at my own pace without stressing about grades.

I wanted to go to RISD or Pratt–never had the opportunity, tho—-I even was jealous of a nephew who DID have the chance and didn’t want it—but now I think I’m where I’m supposed to be and each day brings something wonderful in how I see things–your words
are most reassuring and true as far as I can see—one of my teacher’s used say You’re On The Right Track—but you’ll get run over, if you just sit there….makes a good tee shirt logo !..by the way that Gorilla might as well have carried red roses and dragged a flipping shark behind him he was sooooo noticable to me…..

I was just having a conversation with my 12th graders (French AP!) about Senioritis and how early it hit them this year, and what I can do in my class to keep their interest intact so they can make it to the AP exam. I will share this with them, Danny. I liked your “restock our cache of creative stimulation”.

Wonderful post, thank you (again) for sharing your thoughts, your life and your art. I recently discovered your books and they are inspiring me to try (again) to record by drawing instead of only by photography. I’m hoping that my spring trip to NYC will include some sketching time.

I’m a 63-yr old retired teacher who has never stopped enjoying learning. I hope I never do.

I didn’t see the gorilla at all! Still counting. I am coming up to 50 and still don’t feel ready to grow up yet. A lot of my friends are 20 years younger than me or more, thats weird as I kept having to change the number when I realised how much difference there was in our years. I wonder if it is drawing or creating that keeps us young and wanting to try new things. I love your drawing and am so glad you started drawing again as it coincides with me drawing also.

Hi Danny. What you have written about the act of drawing is so good. I’d really like to re-post it on an education blog http://www.weareoca.com. Would you give me permission to do so, with links back to you of cours?. OCA is a charity that aims to widen participation in the arts and offers education to degree and MA level via open learning.

Is youth wasted on the young? George Carlin suggested:
” I want to live my next life backwards:
You start out dead and get that out of the way.
Then you wake up in a nursing home
feeling better every day.
Then you get kicked out for being too healthy.
Enjoy your retirement and collect your pension.
Then when you start work,
you get a gold watch on your first day.

You work 40 years
until you’re too young to work.
You get ready for High School: drink alcohol, party, and you’re generally promiscuous.

Then you go to primary school,
you become a kid,
you play,
and you have no responsibilities.
Then you become a baby, and then…

You spend your last 9 months
floating peacefully in luxury, in spa-like conditions
– central heating, room service on tap,
and then…
You finish off as an orgasm.”